“Alone, I need to do this alone.”
He lets out a quick burst of air before stepping back and walking further down the street.
“You were always so kind,” his grandmother starts as soon as Andri is out of earshot. The look she gives me is so heartbreakingly earnest that it would be sweet if she wasn’t bulldozing all my boundaries at this moment. “So I’ll be honest, I’m shocked that you’d be willing to throw all of this”—she gestures back to Gerald behind her—“away!”
I blink. “Throw what away?"
“Your future, dear, a name you can be proud of—a legacy to uphold with the Van Kleeth family.”
“I don’t want his name,” I tell her simply.
“I want to give it to you,” my ex adds uselessly.
The sound of his voice makes my lip curl, and I glare at him as he retreats behind the old woman.
“Do you know that he cheated on me? That he told me having a mistress was going to be part of our marriage?”
Nan pats my hands sympathetically. “Darling, he’s reformed now.”
Gerald nods nervously. “Yes, very reformed.”
“And besides, the Van Kleeths can’t handle another scandal on my grandson’s hands.”
“Oh,” I say flatly.
“I told him, and it’s what I said when you first arrived here, that I would remove him from the will if he doesn’t marry you, and I meant it. He won’t inherit a cent.”
Gerald winces but doesn’t deny it.
I’m frozen in shock. It’s bad enough that I thought he was cheating on me but had loved me before. But now I find out that our entire relationship was based on the fact that once we were caught, if he didn’t marry me, he would be written out of his family’s money.
“And besides,” she adds, straightening her spine with indignation. “Silly girls don’t leave a Van Kleeth, not after he’s offered you a chance to elevate yourself. Gerald, come.” She beckons him like a lapdog.
She places my left hand in his, and I watch in horror as he slides the heavy diamond, the one I last saw when I was I was dropping it unceremoniously into a cardboard envelope, onto my ring finger.
The worm of man looks up at me and smiles. I’m in such a state of shock that I do nothing for a minute but stare back at him. But soon my heart jumpstarts, and I rip my hands out of their grasp.
“Saving face, that’s what our entire relationship was about?”
They stare as if I’ve suddenly started speaking Russian.
Nan’s mouth works without sound, and Gerald looks like someone just unplugged his brain.
I wrench the diamond from my finger and throw it, again and for the last time, squarely between his eyes.
Chapter twenty-six
Andri
Ican’ttakeit.
I watched them from afar up until Daphne let him slide the engagement ring back onto her finger. I don’t even know where I’m going, but I'm moving. I can’t bear to look at the love of my life falling back into her horrible ex’s arms.
I bolt down the sidewalk, tearing through the crowd. I shove through throngs of parkas and mittens, knocking hot chocolates out of at least three hands. People gasp, someone yells an indignant “Hey!” as a marshmallow bounces off my fur. But I barely register any of it.
My ears are hot as I run through the tinsel-string booths, past families taking photos in front of the holiday lights. I head straight for the line of pines at the edge of town. Past the hardware store and street of residential houses, I don’t stop running until, like some wild thing caught in a trap, I clip a tree trunk with my shoulder.
Cold air sears my lungs, and snow crushes under my feet. I fall to my knees. I’m far enough into the woods that the musicand chatter have faded into nothing but the hollow hush of the woods.
